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June 12, 2021 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux

01:58:13

Couple: "WE WANT THE EVIL LADY'S HOUSE!" Freedomain Call In

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	So tonight, our caller writes, My situation is this.
	My manipulative and abusive mother is in possession of the house I desperately want to live in and where I want to raise my children.
	Thanks to my husband, my mother currently doesn't have anything to hold over me, so she's trying as hard as she can to make sure that I can't have the house without major strings attached, such as her living in the guest house on the property and having us rent the house from her rather than own or even rent to own.
	I cannot have my mother in my life anymore.
	I simply cannot take it, and I keep hoping that she'll just suddenly die so that I can have the house.
	But I don't see her dying anytime soon, unfortunately.
	I can't take her to court over it because, due to her most recent divorce, I am absolutely terrified of the court system, especially locally.
	They took my little brother and forced him to live with his pedophile father, despite clear evidence of him being abusive.
	Who knows what might happen if I go near the court system.
	My grandparents' house would be the perfect place for me and my husband to raise our kids, and a good place for us to live the rest of our lives.
	I can't stay in or near the county I live in thanks to my mother, because now not only does this trigger my CPTSD, but I'm also terrified of the pedophiles, crooked cops, and evil judges.
	On top of that, they all know my name and face now because of my mom.
	I have been stalked by some of them before.
	I know my mom will not change.
	I also know that she will not admit any guilt for the things that she has done, and even if she did, she would play her classic poor, naive Christian mother act, saying she was just ignorant and well-intentioned and never meant to hurt anyone, which is a load of bullshit.
	My mom has also said what she wants for Mother's Day is, quote, an in-my-face explanation of why you are so guarded around me, only tolerating me and avoiding me.
	So, I think it's time to tell her what a manipulative and abusive cunt she is and call her on her shit.
	I asked my old counselor to help me out with this because she also knows my sister is in my mom's former church community that has an idea of what my mother really is like and has credentials.
	She's also a Christian counselor who works at a church, so I thought I might be able to convince my mom to join us for essentially an intervention, but my old counselor hasn't responded.
	I can't say I blame her, really, but I cannot confront my mom alone.
	She's too slimy a snake and will weasel and manipulate her way out of everything and play victim.
	So, I need the house.
	But I also need my mother out of my life for good.
	I can't find a way to do both.
	Please help. I can't imagine giving up the house.
	It was the one consistent good place in my childhood.
	And I need it. I need to be there.
	I need to remember my nanny and granda.
	I need to have a safe place.
	I need a place away from my mother's poison.
	Please help. Well, thanks for calling in.
	That's really quite a wild story.
	I'm sure there's a few more details to add.
	It's a long letter, but is there anything that you wanted to sort of flash in or anything that's changed since you sent that in?
	The one thing that's changed is I have gotten in contact with my counselor again, and I've spoken to her a couple times and have another appointment scheduled, so she's trying to help me through too.
	Okay, okay. So, do you want to tell me a little bit about your childhood and what happened with your mom?
	Where did things begin to go?
	I guess more than sideways, but I guess upside down, backwards, inside out, whatever you want to say.
	But where did things start to go wrong with your mom?
	There's a lot. You know, from as far back as I can remember, it's been a whole lot.
	It got to... It got worse the older I got.
	I think I didn't have it as bad as my older sister.
	My mother, I do believe, is a narcissist.
	And so we kind of originally had the three kids, me, my older brother, and my older sister.
	So my older sister got to be the black sheep.
	My older brother was the golden child, and I was the one that's classically neglected.
	So the main thing for me was neglect, but I've actually kind of put a little list together of some of the things like I was not allowed to go to school.
	My mother insisted on homeschooling me, which she had miserably failed to do with my older sister.
	And I would try and do my schoolwork and I actually enjoyed my schoolwork.
	But I kept not being able to move forward in it because I didn't have a teacher to give me a test.
	So I couldn't move forward.
	And then I was continuously blamed for not doing my schoolwork when I was always asking, you know, I'm ready.
	Can we do this test? And she'd be like, oh, no, I have to go out on the property.
	Let me finish this email or don't talk to me while I'm on the phone.
	Some excuse every single time.
	So that was about fourth grade.
	And she just never allowed me to go to any real school then.
	I never got to have any pre-approved friends.
	I essentially grew up in a Christian homeschool cult, is what I would call it.
	Rather you didn't get to have any friends that weren't pre-approved by her.
	Yeah, no. All of my friends had to be vetted and all of their parents had to be vetted first by my mother to make sure that she could manipulate them and that they would believe her act before I could be friends with them.
	Let's see. Go through my list.
	I was alone most of the time.
	And when we moved in with husband number three, which was the pedophile, I talked about my little brother being forced to live with.
	I was alone most of the time in that house, and she would leave me at 11 years old alone in the house from as early as, say, 8 a.m.
	to 8 p.m., leave me an 11-year-old to take care of my three-year-old brother at the time.
	So I would be left alone with him.
	Where was she at? She went to work.
	Okay, okay. Yeah.
	Let's see. One of her things, because I couldn't do my schoolwork, and she would tell me I wouldn't do my schoolwork.
	She always told me that I was stupid and I was going to grow up to be a bag lady, a stripper, or a prostitute.
	None of which is true.
	No, I haven't done any of those, thankfully.
	Wait, and not all of them, right?
	Because that's a category question?
	You haven't done all of them, at least not at the same time.
	Well, I mean, you know, it's been tough times.
	Gotta put up that, what is it, OnlyFans...
	No, I haven't done any of that.
	She would drop me in the car with her a lot of the time, especially after church, to speak with her, and she would not let me get out of the car until, say, we had talked about the sermon that day and my thoughts on it, which, at this point, I was so, this was when I was a teenager, so I was so shut down at this point that During the sermon, I couldn't even...
	I wasn't there.
	So I couldn't absorb what was being said to begin with.
	And I knew anything I said was going to be wrong and there would be some reason or probably a punishment.
	Yeah, because nothing says Christian fidelity like three marriages, right?
	Oh, it was actually four, but this...
	No, four is bad again.
	Three is okay, but four is bad again.
	I think it's every alternate, like every even number marriage is okay, but...
	Okay, sorry, go ahead. Again, like, she forced me to live with her and her pedophile husband, who...
	I've even spoken with her about this before, and she said, before she ever even started dating him, when I was around five...
	She felt an evil presence from him.
	She didn't like him. But then she said, oh, you know, I was just thinking that because he was ugly.
	And then he was a good Christian man, like all of her other husbands had been so far.
	So she ended up marrying him.
	And I don't remember being molested, but I was heavily groomed.
	Even in front of my mother, that there...
	Pictures from when I was little that any sane person would look at and say that's that's not right.
	So like my mother would take me, my older brother, my older sister at the time over to husband number three's house to spend the night where we would actually all have to sit in the living room, sleep in the living room.
	Because at this point in time, she was not living with the husband.
	They were living separately while he built onto the house.
	So me and my siblings, you know, we got to stay in the living room and hear them in the other room having sex.
	And every time before this, husband number three would have me wrestle on the bed with him.
	And sorry, how old were you at this point?
	I would have been between five and seven.
	Okay. So...
	And I think the reason for that was he was...
	He was trying to get erect because, you know...
	It was like foreplay for him, I guess, if he's...
	Yeah, yeah. Pretty much.
	Again, I was isolated most of the time.
	Left alone, home most of the time.
	Let's see... When the church we were in started to catch on to my mother and what she's really like, she decided that that church wasn't good enough.
	And so we needed to uproot and move to a new church.
	So I kind of lost all of my friends that I had worked so hard to even have at that church and was thrown into a new one where I didn't know anyone.
	And that was part of the goal was to keep me isolated so I wouldn't talk to anybody.
	Again, she regularly told me that she thought I was stupid, and anytime I brought that up, it would be straight denial of, oh, I never said that, or you have a wild imagination, or I was only joking.
	She would constantly pit me and my siblings against each other, especially my older two siblings.
	Sorry to interrupt. So you said pedophile regarding the third husband.
	You considered yourself groomed, he wrestled, doesn't fit the sobriquet, the label.
	So what is it?
	You said with regards to your brother that you felt that the pedophile activity occurred?
	Yes, my little brother, who was actually husband number three's son, Got it.
	Oh, so half-brother?
	Yeah. No, it wouldn't be my stepbrother.
	He's my half-brother. Half-brother, sorry.
	But he got it much, much worse.
	He's currently living with his father, and he would tell us, you know, like, Dad, put his finger in my butt, or, you know, was humping my leg the way a dog would do, or... He actually molested my little brother in the police station parking lot and nothing was done.
	Well, that's rolling some dice, isn't it?
	Holy crap. So he molested his son.
	What you're saying is he molested his son in the parking lot of the police station.
	Yes, because while visitation was being done, that would be...
	Oh, that was a handover situation?
	Yeah, that would be where we dropped off and picked up.
	And so while his father was in the car with him waiting for us to show up, he molested my little brother in the car in the parking lot.
	I'm so sorry. And Tara, did you know any of this stuff when you were a kid or was it something you found out later?
	No, I knew all of this and like I would almost every night I heard my mother's husband yelling at her and then twice, like between 11 and 14 years old, I went in there and yelled back because I was just so sick of it.
	But again, with schooling, I found out when I was 18, I have Asperger's.
	And even earlier than that, I knew I was dyslexic and so did my mother.
	And nothing was ever done about this.
	No diagnostic.
	And I think it's because when my older sister was very little, she was allowed to go to public school, but she was Nonverbal as a child.
	And so they decided let's have a child psychiatrist, you know, look at her.
	And they were getting to the point where they're saying, yeah, something's wrong with her.
	We need to do more testing.
	She got diagnosed with POTS. And then, you know, my mom pulled her out of school.
	It's similar to dysautonomia.
	It's an issue with the nervous system, kind of not your autonomic nervous system, the one that, you know, controls your heart rate and your breathing when you're not thinking about it.
	So, like, my sister would occasionally just pass out in the floor, and my mom was just like, oh, that's normal.
	That's just how that is, and even step over her and not even check on her.
	So it's her main issue with it was that her heart and her brain would not communicate well enough so her heart rate wouldn't go up if she stood up too fast and so she would fall on the floor and pass out.
	Sorry, I know you were talking about the education.
	I just want to sort of follow out what happened with your half-brother.
	Did the molestation continue into his teen years?
	I haven't spoken to him in two or three years.
	I haven't had any contact.
	Last time I spoke to him, it was still going on.
	So I don't know about him at this point.
	As far as we know, the father either cut contact or has threatened or convinced to cut contact.
	But also, as far as we know, the molestation is still going on.
	Yeah. Still going on now.
	Quite possibly. As he gets into his later teens, I mean, especially.
	He's about to be 18 this year.
	Right. So it just...
	But my main thing is my mother.
	For obvious reasons, I don't want to keep her in my life.
	She was neglectful towards me.
	She put me in dangerous situations over and over again.
	Oh, another one of the things she did was she would send me over to husband number three's house by myself to spend the night on multiple occasions.
	I can't remember if they were married at this point.
	Yeah, you know, just send your five, six-year-old over with your boyfriend for the night.
	Well, I mean, the number of women, I'm sure this happens for men too, but the number of women who offer up their children to pedophiles in return for money is not zero.
	That number is not zero.
	I know that. Now, here we've got one, and, you know, the numbers just go up from there.
	I'm not saying it's common, but I've been around long enough to have heard it a whole bunch of times that the woman's like, well, you know, if you want the kid, you're going to pay some bills?
	Okay, here's the kid. I think it was more...
	She wanted something to happen to me so she could play victim again and just go, oh, I didn't know, like she did with the past two husbands.
	Well, we're going to get to the family habits of pursuing drama in just a little while.
	It may not just be your mother.
	It may be a little wider than that.
	But listen, I do want to keep hearing about the tale going forward.
	So please go ahead. I don't know what else.
	I ran out of notes.
	At this point, I mean, I went through the bite model the other night just to see.
	It's like, well, surely it wasn't as bad as a cult.
	And I looked through it and I couldn't find the regular scoring system for it.
	But looking through each little facets, I just gave one point for each.
	And then ended up a 60 out of 64 with the bite model.
	Which is for measuring how...
	Well, listen, you don't...
	Unfortunately, I know where you're coming from, right?
	So there's a tension and almost a desperation in your stories about your mother.
	And the reason for that, and tell me for any time of the conversation I go astray in characterizing what you think and feel, put me completely straight because I don't want to put words in your mouth.
	But my understanding is that there's a tension about it because most times if you have a stone evil parent or parents and you begin to try and speak your truth, your history, your experience to the world, what does the world do?
	Well, I'm sure she meant well.
	Well, she had a tough upbringing herself.
	Well, she did the best she could with the knowledge she had, but she's still your mother.
	Like, just shut up, abuse victim.
	I don't want to hear it. Yes.
	Yes. Right. Very much so.
	And uh...
	This is where a lot of violence against the world comes from.
	By the way, if you want to diminish the amount of violence in the world, start listening to victims of child abuse.
	Just because it makes you feel uncomfortable, I don't care.
	I don't care. I don't give a shit that it makes you feel uncomfortable.
	If somebody in your life is telling you a story of child abuse, shut the hell up, put on your listening face, and absorb what they're saying.
	Listen to what they're saying. Don't react.
	Don't tell them they're wrong.
	Don't minimize. Don't make excuses.
	Don't just listen to somebody talking about We're good to go.
	It's parents as well.
	Power corrupts.
	And we have a society that herds abuse victims back and puts them back in the houses and orbits and dependency and connection with their abusers, with their parents.
	You get a woman who's been abused by a husband for 20 years.
	What do we say? Get out, never look back.
	We have a child. And she chose to be with that husband.
	She chose to marry that husband.
	She got to vet him. And she had other options or no options at all.
	She chose that husband, lived with him voluntarily, could have left at any time.
	And yet we find out she's been abused for 20 years.
	We tell her to get out and never look back.
	But when it comes to children who never got to vet their parents, who never had any alternatives, who could not leave and never chose to be there, we say, oh no, but...
	That's your mom. You've got to go back.
	You've got to stay in touch. If you don't forgive her, you'll be cursed.
	Right? So we ever say that to a woman being abused for 20 years, being beaten up, maybe even raped in her marriage?
	Do we say to her, but that's your husband.
	Now, she made a vow.
	I didn't make a vow to my mom.
	You didn't make a vow to your mom. She made a vow.
	She said, oh, that's your husband. You made a vow before God.
	You've got to go back and stay and live with this abuser for the rest of your life.
	You've got to keep that relationship.
	If you leave him, you'll experience such terrible and crushing guilt.
	It will curse you for the... It's insane.
	It's insane.
	These double standards.
	So I'm a place, you can tell me, I'm not going to disagree with you.
	I'm going to give you massive amounts of sympathy and empathy.
	I am so sorry that this was your introduction to the planet, that you had to burrow your way out of this incredibly dangerous and dysfunctional hell.
	I am so, so...
	Sorry about all of this and I accept everything you say.
	If you want to say more, I won't say I'm happy to listen like yay, but I'm certainly willing to listen because listening to people who are suffering diminishes that suffering.
	Everybody who rejects the honest statements of victims of child abuse is siding with the abusers and re-inflicting the abuse on the children.
	Just so everybody out there understands the basic reality, somebody's telling you that they were abused as a child and you get uncomfortable and you withdraw and you punish them with ostracism or you tell them that they were wrong or it wasn't that bad or you've got to have empathy with the mother.
	You're simply siding with the abusers and re-traumatizing the child.
	You are siding with child abusers and re-traumatizing the adult child.
	You can make that choice.
	It's not a violation of the non-aggression principle, but it's a severe intergalactic douche move.
	I just wanted to mention that because that is sadly uncommon.
	It's so uncommon for people to listen to victims of child abuse that they have to pay often 200 bucks an hour to get a professional to listen to them.
	You have to pay people.
	To listen if you've been abused.
	Only if you've been abused by a parent.
	If you've been abused by a spouse or a boyfriend, everybody gives you hugs and sympathizes and cares and tells you to get out and will offer you a place to stay and some money.
	You're a strong, brave, independent.
	You go for it, right? In the relationship you chose.
	But I'm the place where people can come and I will listen.
	I will sympathize.
	I am so sorry.
	I'm so sorry about everything you went through and the extraordinary danger that you experienced.
	I mean, maybe he's a gay pedophile, in which case you were somewhat saved by your gender in a way that your half-brother wasn't.
	And that's so...
	I mean, having a predator in the house of that nature is cripplingly terrifying.
	Yeah. What happened to your mom's relationship with this monster?
	She eventually decided to get a divorce after they were...
	Oh, no, I know. I know.
	You said she had a fourth marriage, so just to, you know...
	No, no, no. This was the fourth marriage, but the third husband.
	Okay, but why did she end the relationship?
	Did she catch him doing something really bad and move to protect her children?
	No. I actually caught him cheating because one day I decided to, you know, be stuck at home alone again while my mother went off to work.
	But her husband didn't go off to work until later in the day.
	So he had some woman over and didn't know I was home in the other room.
	So I heard what was going on.
	And after that happened, he went to work where my mother and him both worked together.
	And he saw that I wasn't there.
	And that was because I had been home.
	So once I knew he had left the house, I called my mom to tell her, you know, what I heard had been going on.
	And he freaked out and sped back to the house.
	He didn't know I had told my mom at this point.
	And he got back while I was on the phone with my mother.
	And telling her what had happened.
	And I could, you know, feel that threatening presence behind me and he was listening to what I was saying.
	And he didn't do anything because I think, you know, he had been caught and I had already said everything, so there wasn't a way he could threaten or bribe me from saying it at this point.
	But I think that was the final thing where my mom decided That was it.
	That was enough. But for the past few years, you know, when I was listening to them fighting every night, I had asked my mother, like, why, why don't we just leave?
	And her answer was always, oh, it's not that simple.
	Like, yes, it is.
	We have multiple places we could go.
	We have plenty of reason to leave, but no, no, no, it's not that simple.
	But no, every day I was there, I would wake up thinking, you know, am I going to be beaten or molested or raped or killed?
	Because there was one time he pointed a gun at me.
	Oh, the third husband?
	Yes. What was the circumstance in that?
	The circumstance in that was my cat had gotten herself stuck on the barn roof.
	So I was in, I don't know how she got up there or why she couldn't get down.
	I'm sorry, I just, the intellectual challenge of a cat getting stuck on a roof to pointing a gun at a child, boy, this is going to be a thread to follow.
	Wow, this is going to be quite a ride, quite a journey, but sorry, go ahead.
	Get her off. She had gotten stuck in a little whole barn roof because it was old.
	So I climbed up on a mobile home that he had in the back, which later we found out was filled with drugs and guns and child porn and I don't even know what all.
	So I didn't know that at the time, but I had climbed up on top of this to get my cat, and I looked back, and he had come out of the house with the shotgun and was pointing it at me, and I got down, and I can't even...
	I know he yelled at me and was saying to never go near there or something, but again, a lot of my memory from back then is kind of blank.
	Like, I don't think the memories ever were...
	Well, I guess he was afraid that you might see the photographic material he had in the truck and might report him, right?
	Yeah, I'm sure.
	And I think that's...
	I think my kind of bitchiness and being willing to tell people what was going on Was one of the reasons I wasn't molested, because he tried to get me to keep secrets, like, when I was really little, but I didn't do that.
	I would just, like, my mother wouldn't allow me to play with Bratz dolls when I was little, so he was like, oh, I'll buy you a Bratz doll, but it has to be a secret, and we'll keep it at my house.
	So, you know, I'm, like, five years old, and I'm like, I got a Bratz doll!
	And I would always do that.
	And there was another time when, um, He offered to give me a Yoohoo, which is a little chocolate drink.
	And I was like, yeah, I want one.
	And he was like, okay, but I'll only give it to you if you call me daddy.
	Yeah, and then I later told my mother about that, and I was like...
	And she was like, oh, it's just because he's your stepdad.
	And I'm like, no.
	Because even at this age, when I didn't really even know what sex or anything was, I was really grossed out.
	You know, just that... I didn't have words for it at the time, but I was just like, ugh.
	Have you ever seen the movie Alien 2?
	I don't think so.
	Let's fly up to the spaceship and nuke it from orbit!
	Anyway. It's a phrase that pops to mind.
	Yeah, I've seen Alien 2, but she hasn't.
	Yeah. No, but there was so much that happened, but I mean, I've been trying to work through my actual childhood and what happened.
	What I want now is...
	I really want the house because it's very special to me.
	It was the place where my nanny and granddaughter were and they were far more like my parents than my actual parents were.
	But they raised your parents, right?
	My nanny and grandchild raised my mother.
	Okay, so you understand that from the outside, I might have a certain amount of skepticism as to their wandering benevolence as caregivers, because that's who they raised, right?
	Yeah, I don't know why my mother ended up the way she did, other than My grandparents were in a Christian cult as well, though not nearly as bad as the way my mother treated me.
	It was Church of Christ.
	But my mother, you know, was allowed to go to school and everything.
	I think maybe a large part of her issue was, like her, her parents were very much spare the rod, spoil the child.
	So there was lots of spanking.
	Um... And her sister died of leukemia.
	Her little sister died of leukemia when she was only 18.
	And at this point, my mother had already felt like she was being ignored because she was her sister was more popular and bubbly.
	And my mother was very introverted and just wanted to read her books and felt like an outcast.
	So I don't know what happened all there.
	But as far as my grandparents treatment of me and my siblings, It felt like, you know, they actually loved me.
	They wanted what was best for me.
	They taught me a lot more than either of my parents ever did.
	And it was very...
	So how did they let you stay in a situation of danger for so long?
	They didn't really know.
	I wouldn't talk to them about it.
	Why not? I mean, they care for you.
	They love you. Why wouldn't you tell them?
	I'm not trying to criticize.
	I'm genuinely curious.
	Like, you've got this great relationship with these great people.
	Why wouldn't you? They would whisk you to freedom.
	They'd whisk you to safety. They'd whisk you to security.
	Why wouldn't you tell them?
	Because I was scared.
	And I was even...
	No, but... I was scared. Sorry, sorry.
	Oh, sorry, sorry. I just asked you a question.
	The reason I'm interrupting, I apologize for that, is because it's kind of their job to know, right?
	This is foundational to the parent-child relationship.
	Because so many times over the course of these last 15 years, people say to me, well, I didn't tell my parents.
	Oh, I didn't tell my... It's their job to know.
	It's your grandparents' job to know that you're unhappy, that you're in danger, that you're miserable, that you're...
	At risk, right? It's their job to know and it's their job to keep asking you questions until you trust them enough to tell them.
	It's never the child's job to tell the parents or to tell the grandparents.
	It's the grandparents' or parents' job to find out and to establish a strong enough of a connection, a strong enough of a relationship and a strong enough of a pursuit On the grounds of curiosity to find out what's going on with the child.
	So when I say, and I phrased it poorly and I apologize for that.
	When I say, why didn't you tell them?
	I assume that they would have asked you, like, you don't seem to be very happy, what's going on?
	You know, you're not, you're a shadow of your former self, you're a shell of who you used to be.
	And they would be persistent until you would tell them.
	Well, when I was with my grandparents, I was happy.
	I was away from the abuse, and it would stop while I was there.
	Okay, so then the second statement, even if you could pull that off, would be kind of a miracle, right?
	But the second statement is, did they not know the nature of their daughter enough to know that she would not be a very good mother, in fact, would be a very dangerous mother, and that they really better keep a close eye on her kids and really grill them to find out what's going on in the family home?
	I don't think they saw through her mask.
	They just saw her multiple marriages and was like, oh, she's just naive or making bad decisions, but...
	See, I've been around her mother quite a few times at this point through Christmas, Thanksgiving, because we've kept contact almost exclusively because she wants to secure this house that her grandparents left behind.
	And I have a hard time seeing through Yeah, but you didn't raise her, brother.
	You didn't raise her. True.
	So the idea that the grandparents are really good and connected and loving and they have no idea the personality of the child that they raised.
	No, no, no. Sorry.
	I mean, I can't give that one to you because it's just not true.
	It's just not true. You know your child.
	I know my daughter better than I know my wife in a way, right?
	Because I've been around with my daughter since she was born, since before she was born.
	Whereas, of course, I only met my wife when she and I were both in our 30s, right?
	Yeah. So the idea that they were not aware of the nature of your mother and they could easily be fooled by her and felt no need to...
	Look out for her kids or make sure the kids were okay.
	Honestly, you guys aren't parents, right?
	And I hate to pull the parent card like it's some sort of magical, I'm right.
	But if you haven't been a parent, it's really tough to know just how absolutely well you know your kid because you've seen them all through their formative years.
	You've got their personality.
	You've seen it grow and emerge.
	You've been part of what shapes it in a way that doesn't happen as an adult.
	You know your kid's Better than you know everybody.
	So it would be like me saying, God, I had no idea my daughter was verbal.
	I had no idea that my daughter was really verbal.
	I had no idea that my daughter was really creative.
	I had no idea that my daughter was argumentative.
	And now, you know, I mean, there's a couple of people here who have...
	Played among us a couple of times with my daughter.
	If I were to say, you know, you can probably throw this in the chat response, but if I were to say these things about my daughter, I had no idea that she was verbal and creative and argumentative and strategic.
	It wouldn't make any sense because I raised her.
	I know her.
	So the idea that your grandparents didn't know Your daughters, their daughters, your mother's personality, not true.
	Like, this fundamentally untrue.
	And again, I'm sorry to say this, but as a parent, you have to, like, it's impossible to not know your children.
	You can't do it. Because you raised them.
	You can't not know your children.
	I don't know. It could be that...
	They thought if they said anything that there would be backlash and they wouldn't even be allowed to see me and my siblings again.
	I know that my mom argued with her parents a lot, but it would be more after, you know, me and my siblings were sent to the guest house, so I don't know what those arguments were about.
	See, here's the thing. This is my basic position, right or wrong.
	If a child is getting abused and continues to be abused, Day after day, week after week, month after month, year after year, decade after decade.
	I give no free passes to anyone in the vicinity.
	Now, for you, I'm absolutely sure that your grandparents were such a step up from your mother that they looked like heaven itself, right?
	But, but, they had to know their daughter's personality, and they did not then say, we really got to check out on this kid.
	Listen, you were in danger of being raped and killed, right?
	Yeah.
	I believe you on that.
	I absolutely believe you on that.
	And those who don't believe you are just denying reality, right?
	Because he pointed a gun at you.
	And when you have a pedophile in the family, the pedophile will often prefer to kill people rather than be exposed because to be exposed means to get charged, which means to go to prison, which means to probably get killed because there are a lot of people in prison partly because they were raped by pedophiles as children and grew up violent and impulsive and so on, right? And so pedophiles would rather kill than be exposed because being exposed is mostly a death sentence for them anyway.
	So if you're in danger of being raped and killed, or just killed, and you've got grandparents in the vicinity, and those grandparents are not finding out what's going on, not finding ways to keep you safe, I'm sorry.
	I mean, you have a sentimental and historical relationship with them, which I don't want to say is false.
	I'm not going to tell you you're wrong.
	But from the outside, it looks like a severe dereliction of duty.
	Now, they may have had some big cause or reason.
	Can you guys just give me a rough age?
	You don't have to give me exact ages, but just where you are in the life journey.
	Mid-20s.
	Mid-20s, okay.
	So you've been an adult for like seven, eight years, right?
	So if your grandparents had some particular strategy that they were pursuing, would they not have told that to you and saying, oh, my, all these years, we watched, we wondered, we worried, we stressed.
	But here's why we didn't intervene here.
	Here's why we didn't ask you. Here's why we didn't find a way to get you to safety.
	Here's why. Have they said that?
	Both of my grandparents are dead now.
	My granddaughter passed away when I was 12, which was very shortly after we moved in with husband number three.
	And then Very quickly.
	See, that's what I meant to ask, was were they even there to see this?
	Well, my nanny, in some ways, was physically there, but after my granddaughter passed...
	She developed mental...
	Yeah, after my granddaughter passed, when I was 12, not a year later, dementia hit my nanny really quickly.
	Really hard. She became very mean and argumentative and racist, which she had never been like before.
	She had always been very social and would talk your ear off.
	It was something she was known for.
	So by that point, so about time 14, my grandfather was dead and my grandmother was mentally dead.
	Now, are these the two people you're talking about with regards to the house?
	Yes. Or was there another set of grandparents somewhere around, right?
	No, it's the grandparents that own the house.
	Yeah, I didn't meet my dad's parents.
	I met my paternal grandfather when I was around 14, 15.
	And then I never met my paternal grandfather because he's in a high security prison or was.
	He might be dead by now. You met your grandmother?
	Yeah, my grandmother. Okay, so your grandfather died when you were 12 and then a year later your grandmother got dementia, right?
	Yes. Okay, so obviously their opportunities to help and protect you ended around that time.
	They still had 12 years, right, before that they should have or could have been doing something.
	But yeah, obviously they're not going to tell you what their reasoning was now because dead, dementia, and so on.
	So I obviously apologize for that.
	I appreciate the information for sure.
	Okay, so this is the house.
	Is this the house where the pedophile lived and preyed upon his son?
	No. No, absolutely not.
	I never want to go anywhere near there.
	No. My grandparents' house is out in the middle of nowhere.
	And that's part of why I want it.
	It's a very safe area.
	It's kind of out in the woods.
	I know all the neighbors.
	Very low crime rates.
	Never had any issues. The biggest problem is actually the mountain lions.
	Sorry, how much is the house worth, roughly?
	I'm not even sure what it's worth.
	It's not even that amazing a house.
	It's a heavily modified mobile home, but it has three bedrooms and a guest house, a workshop and a store because my grandparents had a jewelry store.
	Wait, so like it was originally on wheels?
	It could originally be transported.
	It could originally be transported.
	You know the... It's not a trailer.
	No, it's not a trailer. Okay, I'm just trying to give me a map here.
	Could you pass a picture?
	A picture? I don't think I have a picture.
	No, not of the house, but of the sort of...
	I just want to get a sense of what we're talking about here.
	Could you pass a picture? Okay.
	You can put it into the chat in Zoom or something like that.
	And I'm sorry to... I just want to get a sense of what it is that we're...
	Yeah, no, I get it.
	Because, you know, I first think trailer home, which to me would be slightly less of a treasure to risk all of this for.
	Oh, it's a house that stands on bricks or like lifts, is that right?
	Yes, yes. Okay, and what's the square footage roughly?
	I'm not even sure, what would you say?
	I have no idea.
	It's large for being a modified mobile home, but the actual price and value and everything of it isn't what I wanted.
	It's the area. It has enough space because Mitchell and I want two kids and Once our kids are a little bit older, I plan on either continuing to groom dogs or possibly breeding poodles, and there's space for that.
	I just wanted to tell you, just to interrupt for a second, how enormously pleased I am to hear the word groomed, to groom, followed by nothing like we've heard before.
	Yes, that's actually something that very much bothers me.
	I just wanted to tell you how nice that is at this moment in the conversation.
	Yes, no, that's something that's always kind of irked me, is that it's called grooming with children.
	No, I'm a dog groomer, so...
	But there's, it's in a safe area.
	It's in an area I know with people I know that I can trust to have around where I could let my kids, you know, play outside and I could send them out maybe with a walkie-talkie and say, you know, don't go out of the yard and I don't have to worry about someone coming up and grabbing them.
	Right. Or anything, which I probably wouldn't do anyway because I'm a little paranoid.
	I'd probably be on the porch watching, but it's a safe place where I would feel safe to raise my kids.
	I'm sorry. When we eventually have some.
	Yeah, we want to be a little more financial stable.
	Well, I mean, you're in your mid-20s. It's not totally eventually, right?
	No, it's probably going to be at least no more than two years from now, hopefully.
	Okay, okay. So let's see here.
	I'm just having a look at Champion Homes.
	I learned something new. Mitchell's trying to find something.
	Yeah, I found a picture.
	Like, this is the closest I can get to it.
	Oh, it's not bad. Actually, hang on. Sorry, hang on a second.
	I see what you're saying.
	Manufactured homes. Once referred to as single-wide and double-wide mobile homes.
	Factory-built houses engineered, blah, blah, blah.
	500 to 2,300 square foot single and multi-section manufactured homes.
	All right. Okay. I'm going to throw this.
	Just go to championhomes.com.
	Actually, I'll throw this in the chat.
	I sort of get a sense of what we're talking about here.
	And I just wanted to get a sense of the uniqueness or whatever it was that was going on.
	And they range from 45k upwards.
	What's the kind of land space we're talking about here?
	Oh, there's a pretty big yard.
	There's, they had a, like I said, there's a guest house on the property and there's a workshop attached to that where they also had a store outside because they, when they got older, they started, they started jewelry making as a hobby and so they started selling it.
	And there's also a barn out there.
	So it's, it's a decent amount of land.
	Like a couple acres kind of thing?
	How much would you say? I don't imagine it's less than an acre because it's surrounded by houses.
	It's just, you know, they've got a decent driveway up to it and then a It's a relatively tiny backyard.
	The woods all on the side are also a part of the property.
	It's right by a national park.
	So it goes right up next to the park.
	So if a deer wandered into my yard, I could legally shoot it.
	But if it was like two inches out of my yard, I could be fined a billion dollars for shooting an animal in a national park.
	So your grandmother, is she dead, the one who got dementia when you were 12?
	Yes. She passed away probably about five years ago, five, six years ago.
	Okay. So did they leave the house to your mother?
	Is that right? I'm not even sure because I never got to see her will.
	I know that my mother convinced my nanny to give her power of attorney after she had dementia.
	And I also know that my mother has...
	Stolen my nanny's identity.
	She has a credit card in my nanny's name.
	I know she has at least one car in her name, and I don't know if the house...
	Wait, wait, wait. I'm sorry. She's got a credit card in her dead mother's name?
	Yes. Holy zombie Democrat voter from the dead.
	Holy crap. Yes. She's got...
	She's resurrected financially.
	She's got zombie mom, right?
	Yes. Yes.
	Wow. She's even on the car insurance.
	I got into a minor accident at one point.
	And they called me, you know, to sort out insurance claims and, you know, fighting it in court and mentioned her dead grandmother, who they had to mention was they knew was dead, specifically the car insurance company.
	No, you had to tell them that. No, I think I told them.
	No, they knew. You told them.
	Yeah, I had told them before because my mother and I had the same car insurance plan until I moved out.
	And so I had to get off of that because we were no longer in the same household.
	So when I was trying to change it, they were like, oh yeah, you're on my nanny's name there.
	And I'm like, she's been dead for a couple of years.
	And they were like, well, we've got her on here.
	I'm like, well, definitely get me off of that.
	And I told them she's passed away a while ago.
	Okay. I guess that your mom has organized her life so much that the dead woman with dementia has a better credit score.
	I have no idea. Excellent.
	I just know that she's...
	You know, it's funny, too, because, oh, yeah, married a pedophile, yet still I'm somewhat surprised about these other things, you know?
	Like, you'd figure once you now marry the pedophile and send your kid over to the pedophile's house, after that, oh, yes, but fake to...
	Well, that's bad, but, man, fake the credit card and dead grannies...
	Oh, my God. All right.
	Okay. Okay.
	Yeah, no, she's...
	At this point, if somebody came up to me and was like, hey, I saw your mom in the woods, like, sacrificing a baby, throwing it in the fire, I'd be like, yeah, probably.
	Who knows? Right, right.
	What's your mom's story or situation?
	Is she with another guy, or did she tap that out?
	No. No, thankfully.
	She is living in the guest house next to the main house, which is what we want.
	And she's renting out the main house.
	Oh, so in your grandparents' property...
	There's a main house and a guest house.
	She's living in the guest house and renting out the main place, right?
	Yes. And is that her source of income?
	I think she's working for the Postal Service as well, but...
	Of course she is.
	Of course she is. Of course she is.
	She's got all her teeth, which is what you wouldn't expect from Postal Service work.
	Yeah. So she has a full-time job, is that right?
	It's either full-time or part-time, I don't know.
	Okay, okay. And how's her health?
	Aside from a complication, was a hernia more recently.
	She had a c-section with my little brother and she didn't have the surgery to have it, you know, completely sewn back together all right because it would leave a huge scar.
	So she lifted something and herniated through that wall, and she's had issues with that.
	She's gone to the ER, and she's had one surgery, but she needs another, but the hospital won't do it yet because they're like, oh, no, we can't because COVID. Right, right.
	So she's waiting on that one. Is the house paid off?
	Yes. Okay, okay, okay.
	Is there anything else that you want to mention or talk about before I let rip?
	Hopefully to your benefit. I can't think of anything.
	Is that pretty much it? I think so.
	All right. Okay.
	Are you ready? Go for it.
	Are you sitting down? Because I've had some time to think about this issue, which means I'll be talking about it too much.
	Okay. So...
	When we are children...
	Boy, you know it's going to be a short story when it starts out.
	When I was seven. No, eight.
	No, no, I was seven.
	Okay. So when we're kids, if we have abusive parents, they have power over us because we want things from them.
	We want love. We want care.
	We want attention. We want affection.
	We want support. We want stimulation.
	We want playtime. We want them.
	And because we're in a situation of monopoly, they have monopoly control, monopoly power, economic, legal, you name it, violence.
	They have monopoly control over us and so we are as children obsessed with getting what we want from our parents.
	Now this is true whether you have good or bad parents or in between or whatever That's just, you know, because as a parent, like, you'll get this when you're a parent.
	When you're a parent, you have six million things going on in your brain.
	But when you're a kid, it's like, want chocolate, you know?
	You'll think of one thing.
	And so you're like moonlight scattered all over the place, photons bouncing all over the forest, and they're like laser, straight to one thing, one objective.
	And this distracted nature of parents combined with the laser-like focus of children in hot pursuit of their needs is one of the Family.
	So when you were a kid, you desperately wanted something from your mother and that gave her power over you.
	Is that a fair way to put some of your childhood at least?
	That's a fair way to put all of my childhood.
	I thought so, but I didn't want to, you know, I don't want to.
	That's exactly what my mother does.
	I forgot to ask too. I'm sorry.
	Oh, I was just about to.
	Oh, yeah. How long have you been listening to the show for?
	I hope it's been since before we moved, so probably between four and six years.
	Okay, so it's not like this is my second show, in which case I have to take things as a slightly different clip.
	But you are well-versed in the language of self-knowledge and philosophy, so I think we can go at a fairly brisk pace here.
	And if I go astray, as always, put me straight, put me right, and all this, right?
	Okay, so when you were a kid, you were in desperate desire of something for your mother, and that gave her power over you.
	Do you know what I mean when I talk about the analogy of Simon the Boxer from my book, Real Time Relationships?
	No. It's called repetition compulsion.
	So when you were a child, you desperately wanted something from your mother and that gave her power over you.
	Yeah. Does it give you any echoes or connection to what's going on with the house?
	Yeah, no. I know exactly what she's doing.
	No, no, no. Not what she's doing.
	What you're doing.
	By having a need for something that your mother controls.
	Your security, your safety, your independence, your growth, your resources.
	Like everything as a kid, she had control over you.
	Now, as a kid, you didn't have any choice but to need things from her.
	As an adult, you do. Yeah, no.
	Like I was saying, the only thing she currently has to have power over me is the house.
	So I'm aware that by being compliant in any way with her and keeping communication, she has that power over me.
	And what is your strategy or plan to get the house and not your mom?
	Hope she dies.
	Well, I don't know.
	That's part of why I wanted to speak to you about it.
	I was hoping maybe you could possibly come up with something because my counselor and I can't figure it out.
	Oh, I'm going to come up with something, but you're not going to like it.
	Oh, I'll come up with something, but you won't like it at all.
	Right. I don't think you want the house.
	I know that sounds really weird and obviously could be completely wrong.
	I don't think you want the house.
	I think you're just so used to needing things from your mom and being in conflict over your mom by needing things from her and her not providing them to you because that was the whole battle as a kid, right?
	Give me security. Give me love.
	Give me time. Give me attention.
	Don't give me my three-year-old brother when I'm 11 to take care of for 12 hours a day.
	Like, Mom, I need things from you.
	And she's like, I'm not going to provide them.
	No, but I need them. I'm not going to provide them.
	And that was the conflict. And I think you've got so used to that conflict that you're just repeating it.
	That you don't want the house fundamentally.
	What you need is a continuation of the battle with your mother until you're proven right and she's proven wrong, until you've won and she's lost for once in your existence.
	You want to win against her.
	You want to beat her. You want to get what you're owed for once in your relationship with this woman.
	That would be nice, yes.
	But it's not going to happen. I was worried about that.
	Yeah, it's not going to happen.
	Now, maybe she'll die over the course of this conversation, in which case I have an alibi!
	So do you. That's great, right?
	So does your husband. Right?
	You are addicted to needing things from your mom.
	Now, as a child, you had no choice.
	You had to need things from your mom.
	Because if you give up needing things from your parents as a kid, you won't get out of bed, you won't eat, you'll die.
	You have to say, as a kid, if you've got an abusive parent, you have to say, okay, I'll find some way to get it.
	I'll find some way to get security.
	I'll find some way to get sanity.
	I'll find some way.
	To get what I need deserve the birthright of every child, love, affection, care, attention, and so on, right?
	I'm going to find some way to get this.
	As a kid, that's what gets you out of bed and that's what has you not throw yourself into oncoming traffic.
	And I'm not saying that lightly and I'm also not kidding about that at all.
	If as a child, like let's say you're five or six years old and you look at your mom and you say, you know what?
	This crazy bitch has power over me for the next 15 years.
	I'm sorry. That's exactly how I thought, though.
	No, no, I get that. But you can't keep thinking that.
	Because if you say to a child, crazy bitch has got power over you for the next 15 years, it's like saying to you and I, you're going to hell for eternity.
	Because 15 years is so incomprehensibly long to a child that you're saying, I'm in hell forever.
	Now, why would you want to stay alive?
	Why would you want to stay alive to be in perpetual hell?
	Which for a child, and it really is only the age of sort of 14 or 15, we start to get a sense of how we could get out.
	Yeah. Right? So let me ask you a question.
	Let me ask you a question. I actually wrote this in a novel many years ago, but it's a very, very important question.
	And everybody in the audience who's listening now and later, think about this.
	Think about this. So let me say that you and I are floating above the world before you're born.
	And I'm an angel and you're a soul in waiting.
	And what I do is I say to you, Lucy, Lucy, Lucy, Lucy, Lucy.
	Or, I'm not sure what you're going to be called, but let's just say Lucy for the sake of convenience, right?
	Because I don't know what you're going to be named.
	Or maybe I do. I guess I do, because I know the future.
	I say, Lucy, have a seat here.
	I'm going to show you something on the screen, okay?
	Now, on the screen, you get to see what your life is going to be like for the first 15 years.
	And I say, Lucy, it's kind of neutral here.
	You're not happy. You're not sad.
	You're just kind of floating along, you know, and you're kind of half-dozing, and it's kind of nice, but, you know, nothing much is happening.
	You're kind of just bumping along here in this limbo.
	But, Lucy, I'm going to give you a big special today, one day only, just for you.
	You can be born. This is going to be your life, and then you die at 15.
	You get to be born into this family, with this mother, with these husbands, with this pedophile, with this half-brother, with this sibling, with this loneliness, with this abuse.
	And there'll be some fun times too, I'm sure.
	But this is going to be your life.
	You can leave limbo and you can be Lucy in the world.
	But then you get hit by a bus at 15 and you die.
	Lucy, do you want it?
	Are you going to take it? Will you walk through that door and go and be born?
	No, not unless I would have been able to...
	Not unless I saw I was able to rescue my brother.
	Which you've been unable to do, right?
	Yes. Okay, so...
	The reason why this is a very important...
	And by the way, I would have chosen not to be born either, right?
	So... The reason why this is an important question is it brings to the surface the death impulse that we have as abused children.
	And the death impulse is, deep down, I don't want to be alive.
	Because, again, you can't see beyond 15 when you're a little kid.
	And even that seems like an unbelievable amount of time.
	So... Still, not as long as when you order something cool from Best Buy and it takes to come now.
	But anyway, it's a long time.
	And so this death impulse is, if I can't see past the age of 15, and this is my life until I'm 15, I don't want to be here.
	I don't want to live.
	And the death impulse now, our genes...
	They don't care that much whether we're happy.
	They care that we reproduce, right?
	In fact, unhappiness, if you are selected, can actually serve to have you reproduce faster.
	We know that unloved, miserable girls enter, they get puberty earlier, they get menses earlier, they tend to sleep around more, so misery can actually breed fertility in the R-selected gene set.
	So our genes have the fundamental problem of keeping us alive, right?
	When we don't want to live.
	When we look down that tunnel of time and we just see an unbelievable, humiliating, brutal, terrifying shitstorm of abuse Forever.
	Forever. So we don't want to live.
	Why would you want that? You just walk into oncoming traffic, jump off a bridge, jump in front of a train, and you're done.
	It's all over. You're back to limbo, right?
	That's what you perceive as a kid, right?
	So we don't want to live, but our genes need us to live because they don't want to go down with the ship.
	They want to reproduce, right? So what do our genes do?
	It's a big problem. Because the kids who succumbed to just like, fuck it, I don't want to sit here for the next 15 years being abused and possibly raped and possibly killed and humiliated and starved and beaten up, forget it.
	I'll be like those Soviet troops at the end of the Second World War that were sent back to the Soviet Union and they broke the windows on the glass...
	They broke the glass windows on the train and cut their own throats because they didn't want to go back and be tortured for surrendering by the NKVD, by the secret police, right?
	Stalin's secret police. So...
	The kids who succumbed to nihilism, the kids who succumbed to, oh no, thank you, I'm sending this meal called life right back to the kitchen, I'm I might my hiatus make with a bear bodkin.
	I might get out. I'm out.
	I'm checking out, man. Forget it.
	One, you know, tiny tug and I'm done, right?
	So all of the kids who didn't find a way to live to reproductive age, who succumbed to nihilism, or what could be termed a pretty accurate assessment of what's going on, who succumbed to suicide, and the suicide might not have been you walk off a cliff.
	The suicide might have been, well, I'm taking out my abusers with me.
	Yeah, no. Actually, from about 10 to 16, I had a lot of suicidal thoughts.
	Sure. No doubt, no question, and no surprise, right?
	Who wouldn't? Yeah. Who wouldn't?
	While I was being forced to live with husband number three, I have thought many times about not just killing myself, but because, you know, I knew where husband number three kept his guns, which were always loaded and unlocked, I knew where those were.
	And I have thought quite a few times about going in there, waiting for him to be passed out drunk or on drugs.
	Grabbing one of those guns, shooting him in the face, and shooting my mother as well, and possibly myself.
	And I actually kind of regret not doing this, because had I done that, My little brother likely would have gone to live with my nanny and her dementia wouldn't have developed quite as bad and she would have had somebody else with her.
	Or they're actually... My sister or my older brother could have taken him in.
	And it would have saved my little brother from a lot, even if it would have meant that, you know, I would be given the death sentence or sent into prison.
	Well, probably not at 12, but then, of course, your brother would have dealt with the murder...
	I know. So, first of all, yeah, look, I totally get where you're coming from.
	I don't blame you a bit for that at all.
	It would be incomprehensible if none of that ever crossed your mind.
	I remember as a kid at the age of four or five being in a playground, and some kid was annoying me, and I had, I'm just going to grab him by his feet, I'm going to thump him back over and forward in my head.
	Like, that would have killed him.
	Right now, I was a little kid, I couldn't have done anything, and it was just a fantasy, but yeah, that level of violent impulse is right there.
	Of course, of course it is.
	A cornered rat will fight to the death.
	And so this is why when I talk about good parenting and reasonable parenting and peaceful parenting, it's because who knows what degree of difference there was between you and someone who shows up on the front pages of the newspaper for the next six weeks, right?
	So, your genes need to see you to keep alive, but there's nothing to live for, and there's lots of reasons to kill or die.
	Be straight up frank, right?
	Like, when I read about all these school shooters or the murder-suicides within a family and so on, I know where it's coming from.
	I mean, absent, you know, whatever these psychotropic drugs are doing or whatever, but to me...
	I'm not saying I have some magical omniscient insight, but for me, I believe I know where this is coming from, which is there is a death impulse that runs right through the bone marrow of abused children, which is you can only provoke, degrade, humiliate, beat, rape, torture, molest children for so long before something's going to give.
	This is why we can't have a peaceful society until we have peaceful parenting.
	Yeah, I'm actually looking forward to that book.
	I'm going to buy it as soon as you have it out.
	Oh, I think I'll give it away for free, but I appreciate that.
	You can have it for free.
	Either way. Right, right.
	So, and look, look in your heart.
	If you've been harmed, significantly harmed, by an abusive parent, you know the truth about society that other people don't.
	Because the funny thing is, society is a pretty nice place.
	You know, you walk around, you buy things, you go to the mall, everybody's pretty pleasant, they're pretty nice and so on, but you kind of know the truth.
	You kind of know the truth about society, which is society will watch a violent parent take down a child and not even look up from their iPad, not even look up from their Netflix screen.
	That was one of the bigger things that got me as a child was nobody would do anything.
	You sail right through society.
	You've got a whole church community.
	You've got family community, extended family.
	And they just let it all happen.
	It's like, I remember as a kid, I wrote a poem about everybody at the bus stop with their noses in their newspaper and some lion comes along, takes down a kid, bites its arm, drags it away, and everybody just, all they do is they raise their newspaper a little taller.
	That's all they did. They don't want to see, they don't want to know, they don't want to deal with the lion, they want to touch the lion.
	That's because it touches their own nihilism.
	So you've got a problem as a living organism, right?
	Just so you understand it's not personal to you, it's not personal to me, it's just evolution and genetics and survival.
	You don't want to live Well, I want to live now.
	No, no, no. But back then as a kid, right?
	You didn't want to live when you were a kid.
	I'm going to keep it in the present, not because of now, but because more immediate for you as a kid, right?
	I'm talking to you in a chat. So you as a kid didn't want to live.
	And you may have, as you said, you had murderous impulses as kids do, right?
	Because suicide and murder, two sides of the same coin, right?
	Suicide is murdering other people's happiness.
	It's actually a more sophisticated form of murder than straight up murder.
	So you don't want to live, but you must live.
	And so genetics invent a four-letter word that skyhooks you past puberty into reproductive survival.
	It's a four-letter word that allows you to get the other four-letter word that gives the next generation, right?
	It's a four-letter word.
	Do you know what that four-letter word is?
	That your genes hold out to lure you away from the cliff edge?
	Love? Oh, God, no.
	I'm thinking four-letter words.
	Love and the F word came to mind.
	I don't know. No, the purpose is the F word, so you can make the next generation.
	No, not love, because you have no language for that.
	You have no experience of that. You have no knowledge of that.
	I don't think I understood the question.
	The four-letter word...
	Oral.
	No, the four-letter word is not oral, my listener.
	Fine, fine guess.
	Hate. No, no, no.
	The hate is already there. The hate is already there.
	Yeah, that's it. Hope.
	Let's hope. And again got it.
	And again got it. The four-letter word is hope.
	I hope I can fix this.
	I hope I can make it better.
	I hope I can get what I want.
	I hope I can heal it.
	And I'm sorry about your childhood that you got that and Jean.
	I'm really sorry about that.
	But it's hope. I hope I can get what I want despite every evidence for the country.
	I hoped I could talk my mom into being sane.
	Me too. It didn't work.
	It really didn't. But I got better because then I thought I could talk the entire planet into being sane.
	And look how that turned out.
	Oh, I've learned so much over the course of my life.
	I thought, well, I couldn't talk my mom into being sane.
	I couldn't talk the woman who gave me birth, the closest blood relationship that I have.
	I couldn't talk her to being sane.
	Maybe I can do it with the whole world instead.
	Anyway, the hope has been helpful, I think, for the world.
	So, hope is a word I strongly dislike.
	Now, it's necessary for children, because what it does is it allows them to overcome the nihilism, the suicidality, and the murderousness.
	Because you hope it's going to get better.
	But the problem is, it traps you in those relationships.
	As long as you hope you can fix someone, you can't leave them.
	As long as you hope you can get what you want out of someone, you keep sticking around.
	As long as you hope you can pick that lock and there's a great treasure on the other side, you will keep picking that lock and you won't leave.
	If you accept that you cannot ever get to that treasure, you can get up and walk away.
	No, hope is bad.
	Because hope is just an emotion that traps you far more than it frees you.
	Now, if you say, well, I hope that I can go and make some money, and then you go and make some money, okay, good.
	But that's ambition or whatever it is, right?
	But hope is just crossing your fingers and waiting for something good to come to you, which...
	Hope doesn't work. And hope blinds you to the empirical reality of whether it's working or not.
	Hope blinds you to the empirical reality of whether something's working or not.
	So, let's say that you have a problem with acne, right?
	And you say, I hope this cream fixes it.
	And then you put your cream on for two weeks and it doesn't fix it, right?
	You don't hope anymore, right?
	Or let's say you put the cream on, it totally fixes your pimples.
	You don't say, I hope it fixes my pimples because it already has.
	Right? There's not hope anymore.
	So you may say, well, I hope this thing fixes my pimples.
	Okay, then you go out and you... I hope my pimples get better.
	It's not a strategy. I hope this cream...
	Clearer still, whatever it's going to be.
	I hope this cream fixes my pimples.
	But if you keep putting that cream on, Week after week, month after month, year after year, and it doesn't fix your pimples.
	In fact, it makes them worse.
	Your hope that the cream is going to fix your pimples is now trapping you in a decaying spiral.
	It's actually taking you down, and it's preventing you from finding other strategies that could help.
	Does it make sense? Yeah.
	So... The people...
	The people who bully us, the people who control us, the people who abuse us.
	Hope is actually their emotion.
	It's something that they instill within us to keep us around.
	So you think of the traditional example of the guy who's a drug addict and his long-suffering girlfriend who believes her love will save him, right?
	Well, he needs to give her enough hope that she sticks around.
	So he'll be clean for a week or two.
	He'll start working out.
	He'll go get a job.
	And then he'll fall off the wagon, but he'll cry and he'll apologize and...
	He'll give her hope. Like abusers, as you know, there's a whole cycle, right?
	Which is, things are fine, the abuser gets more and more tense, more and more angry, the abuser blows up, does something abusive, hits, beats, self-destroys, or something like that.
	And then there's, after this eruption, there's sorrow, reconciliation, and the power dynamic shifts.
	So the man who beats his wife, then he's in tears, he's begging her forgiveness.
	Now she has all the power, and she feels all of the So when it comes to hope, it is not an emotion in general that is native to our constitution.
	Hope is something implanted into us by our abusers to keep us around, to keep us sniffing around, to keep us bonded, to That which is destructive to us.
	So, I guess, if this hypothesis is any validity, then your mother might have done something over time that might give you any kind of hope.
	Now, maybe she has, maybe she hasn't, but does that fit at all?
	Has she ever done things that give you a glimmer of hope or anything like that?
	No, not really.
	Not in so much that I think she may...
	Sorry, the dog's making noise.
	I'm sorry, can you just say that again?
	Just if you can move a little closer to the mic.
	I'm sorry, I thought the dog was making noise and you could hear it for a second.
	My microphone's probably not picking that up.
	Anyway. Okay. No, like I said, I don't think my mother will change at all.
	I don't have hope for that in any way.
	Okay, so if your mother is not going to change, and your mother owns the house, and you don't know what the will is, and you're not going to court, then you have no rational reason for hope, yet still you hope. Yeah.
	And is there any chance you could get to see the will?
	I assume if you were mentioned in it, then the lawyers would have to provide you with that information, right?
	I don't know.
	I think, I mean, if you're mentioned in a will, they've got to tell you, right?
	I don't know, because the thing is, I don't think my mother has, you know, properly reported my nanny's death.
	So, I don't even know.
	Do you think she's still getting social security checks?
	Most likely. Jeez.
	What's it? Half the COVID unemployment checks, $400 billion, were just straight up stolen and sent to Nigeria and other places?
	And then they say, oh, but there's problems with Bitcoin.
	It's like, yeah, yeah, tell me more.
	Tell me more. Oh, yeah. Don't get me started on that.
	That's a whole other rant, but...
	Okay, so...
	I think that the fundamental mechanism at play here, and, you know, I just want to reiterate, it doesn't mean anything about me being right.
	I'm just telling you what I think. I'm not saying I'm right.
	But what I think is that you are having a tough time letting go of your mother.
	I think that you're sentimentalizing the house in order to raise the stakes to give you the drama of pursuit.
	Because I'll tell you, you know, with massive amounts of love and respect and veneration, this is a, frankly, kind of a drama queen letter and situation.
	And I don't mean this in a diminishing way.
	I don't mean this in a diminishing way.
	I'm just telling you. My first impression was...
	It would be the perfect place.
	Like you're raising the stakes all the time.
	It's the perfect place.
	My grandparents were there and I loved them so much.
	And this is the best place ever.
	No, it's not. No, it's not.
	It is a house wherein you were fundamentally unprotected as a child.
	There's tons of property out there that doesn't have that memory.
	There's tons of great houses out there.
	Yeah, okay, this one's for free, but you know, you know in this life, my dear, nothing is free.
	If you want this house, do you know how you're going to have to pay for it?
	Contact with your mom. You know that's the deal.
	You know that's the deal.
	Again, unless she dies, and even if she dies, she probably left it to a charity.
	She probably left it to the church.
	She probably died interstate, and then unless you have X amount of dollars for lawyers, it's going to be a mess, right?
	So you can sit here and circle this drain, right?
	How old is your mother roughly?
	Is she in her 60s, 50s, 70s?
	She's in her late 50s.
	Her late 50s. Okay, do you know what the average life expectancy is for American women of reasonable health in their 50s?
	It's late 70s, early 80s.
	Yeah, she's got 20, 30 years to go.
	And she's not giving up this house.
	Come on. She got a free resource that gives her income.
	She has not given up this house.
	Because she's got no man who's going to pay her bills right now, right?
	Yeah. Was she very pretty when she was younger?
	Is that one of the things that messed her up?
	Yes. She's always been very pretty.
	Even in her late 50s, she still is.
	I've had people, actually, when we've gone out together...
	Ask me if she was my sister and not even in a joking or kind way.
	She's... My God, you must look old.
	No, I'm just kidding. I'm just kidding.
	I'm just kidding. It's all the stress.
	Yeah, all the stress. Okay, so she's...
	Look, she is not... And she's not dating at the moment, right?
	No, thankfully. So she's not going to give up this house in a million years.
	But what you've done is you have elevated this house to, I can't live without it, absolute perfection.
	And listen, we've all done this with one thing or another.
	Just about, hit me with a why, oh lovely listeners of mine, hit me with a why, if you've had one-itis before.
	I don't know if you guys know what one-itis is.
	Do you guys know the phrase at all?
	So one-itis is, this is the only person that can ever make me happy in my life.
	This woman, this man, is the perfect woman or man for me, and if it's not them, it's nobody!
	Right? Yeah, you've all had it, right?
	You've all had it. It's one-itis.
	It's the belief that there's only one thing, one job, one person, one location, one house.
	It's the only thing that will ever make you happy.
	And it gives you way too much power.
	It gives way too much power to the other person, right?
	So if you believe that there's only one job in the world that's ever going to make you happy and all the other jobs are going to make you miserable, you can't negotiate for a salary, can you?
	You can't. You've got no...
	Leverage, no negotiating room.
	So if you've elevated this house, this is a classic case of one-itis.
	This is the one house that can make you happy, that your children will be safe in, that you'll have great neighbors, that you'll have a place in nature, that you'll be able to raise chickens in every other place.
	It's terrible! Nothing compares, and it's where my grandparents were, and I have happy memories as a child.
	You can't do it.
	This is not about the house.
	This is about you being so used to your mother having control over you that you're elevating this house to an ideal to enslave yourself to your mother, which is what she wants and what you're used to, but not what is healthy.
	You can find...
	A place that is literally infinitely better for you and your husband and your children to come.
	Because it doesn't involve a giant battle and stress with your mother.
	Like you talk about PTSD, CPS, so complex post-traumatic disorder, that's what you mentioned, right?
	Yes. Okay.
	Is it helpful to your PTSD to desperately want something that only your mother controls?
	No. Right.
	So it's not for your happiness.
	It's not for your security.
	It's not for your peace of mind. It's not for the future of your children.
	Your children need a happy, relaxed, contented mother.
	And the house ain't yours.
	And you didn't earn it.
	And if you pay for it with humiliation and being abused, there is no amount of money that will ever buy that back.
	If you continue in your mid-twenties To be a slave to your mother for that which she controls and you cannot access, which is exactly your childhood, to a T. I think, and in a tortured way, I think this is you still wanting to be close to your mother because, do you know what you said to me a couple of minutes ago?
	You said, my mother will not change, right?
	You said this, you said, I know my mom will not change, right?
	I also know that she will not admit any guilt.
	So if she will not change...
	Then what you're doing is confronting a statue of a guy sitting on a horse yelling at him to stand the hell up.
	Is the stone statue of a guy sitting on a horse ever going to stand up?
	No. So why on earth do you want to confront her if you know that she will not change?
	I don't know. I think a lot of it is pent-up rage and Wanting the house.
	And I've long ago given up really having any sort of good relationship with my mother.
	As far as keeping her in my life, I've done it at arm's length.
	But you want to do her damage, is that right?
	You want her to see it, you want her to get it, you want her to hurt as she hurt you, is that right?
	I would like to expose her to keep her from hurting others and to actually have it known what happened.
	Listen, my dear, my friend, my sister in spirit, you need to take care of yourself.
	Let society deal with your mother.
	Let God himself deal with your mother or the devil who's probably coming to pick her up in a couple of decades.
	Let the church, which claims to be an expert on good and evil, let the church deal with your mother.
	Let your mother's own conscience deal with your mother.
	But do not re-traumatize yourself to try to take down a predator who had direct control over you for 20 years.
	You cannot win against your mother.
	I'm telling you this straight up.
	I cannot win against my mother.
	Hell, I probably couldn't even win against your mother.
	You cannot win against your mother because she was a god to you.
	She gave birth to you. She created life.
	She breastfed you. She towered over you.
	She bullied you. She neglected you.
	I'm sure she did some great stuff too.
	She's way too big in your brain to take down.
	You cannot beat your mother.
	You cannot expose her. You cannot win against her.
	You cannot succeed.
	You cannot get what you want from your mother.
	Isn't that the story of your life?
	And whatever you do, because your mother has this effortless power, mastery and control.
	Again, I say this as a parent, and I'm a fine parent.
	You have so much power over your children.
	It's terrifying. Like, it really is.
	And I'm somebody who massively rejects having any power or control over other people, which is why I keep telling you, don't let anything I say be true.
	Don't let me tell you your experience.
	These are just theories. I'm not going to tell you what to do.
	I don't want...
	I'm virulently against having power over other human beings.
	But I have power over my daughter.
	It's a massive amount of power.
	Which is why I'm so committed to peaceful parenting.
	You cannot win against your parent.
	You cannot outmaneuver your parent.
	She knows everything about you.
	She knows all of your tricks because she remembers.
	Remember I said earlier with regards to your grandparents that they know everything about their daughter?
	Your mom knows every move before you make it.
	Your mom knows exactly how to block every move.
	It's like you playing chess with a pigeon.
	I'm sorry to put you in the bird category here, but she will know every move that you make and she will be able to outmaneuver, outcontrol.
	She has had close to 60 years experience manipulating and you'll be in there trying to break that, having committed to that for a couple of months.
	You can't win. If somebody has 60 years experience playing piano and is at the height of their powers, and you've just started learning it a couple of months ago, you can't out-piano them.
	You can't do it. Plus, she's your mom, so she's giant in your psyche.
	So I think that you want to stick it to your mom, you want to get your mom, but that's another way of saying, I can't leave my mom.
	I can't walk away. You still want a relationship.
	Now, in this case, the relationship is about the house and about confronting her and exposing her, but you're still trying to maintain a relationship.
	Now, because your mom doesn't provide you any real value, in fact, is harmful to you or has been harmful to you and put you in grave danger, She can't give you anything positive, but what you can do, I guess in your mind, is you can say, well, yeah, but I can get her!
	And I can release my pent-up anger!
	And then she'll have value to me as the receptacle for my pent-up anger.
	But it won't work because she'll outmaneuver you.
	And you won't ever find a way to get your anger landing, and that will provoke more anger, which will drag you back to try again, which will provoke more anger, which will drag you back to try again.
	That was actually a cycle when I was little, was...
	My mother would spank me for...
	I don't even know all that.
	One time, I remember, I didn't want to play with my friend one day.
	I was probably four years old.
	And I just didn't feel like playing with my friend right then.
	I probably just needed a nap or something.
	I was four years old. But my mother got all offended and spanked me for not wanting to play with my friend.
	Which... That's one of my first memories.
	But later that became a cycle of my mother would spank me for doing something and I would get pissed off.
	Like, how dare she? And so then I would go and purposefully get into trouble to piss her off and then she would spank me again and it was a cycle over and over and over again.
	Right. Do you think that's ended yet?
	Well, she's not spanking me.
	I'm sorry? I said, well, she's not spanking me.
	No, but this is even worse in a way, because now she lives in heaven.
	The only heaven that exists on this planet is this house for you, right?
	And she has control over this paradise where nowhere else can you be happy and revere the grandparents, right?
	She lives in heaven and she's barring you from it.
	This is paradise, the only place where you can be happy, right?
	That's your theory, right? The only place you can be happy and your mom has control of it.
	And you've got a, what's that old knock, knock, knock it on heaven's door?
	You're just trying to break your way in to paradise from limbo, from hell.
	And your mom is like St.
	Peter. She's got the big book.
	Nope, sorry! Granny didn't mention you.
	Heaven's all mine, kid. Move along.
	Can I say a quick story?
	You mentioned the devil. My mother is extremely religious.
	At one time, I remember, and this is a funny story to me, she lost her library card.
	And her explanation for it was that the devil took it.
	The devil stole her library card.
	Oh, God.
	Canadian money. So you might as well pay us in Canadian time money.
	And so most authors make almost no money and then the government buys one copy and lends it out to 100 people who pay absolutely nothing.
	Libraries are communism.
	I loathe them with the passion of a burning sun because it's just theft.
	It's complete and total theft from writers.
	And the amount of work it takes to write a book is beyond imagination of most people.
	And, yeah, still people do it.
	At least give the royalty price.
	At least give, you know, 50 cents or 25 cents to the writer every time the book comes.
	Like something.
	Something.
	But just going, walking up and down and getting everybody's labor for free.
	It's like this socialist asshole paradise of exploiting the hardest working and often least paid members of society, which are writers.
	And it's, well, I guess, thank heavens for Substack these days.
	So yeah, no, I get that.
	Not taking responsibility. I've mentioned this story before, but my mother, when I was in my early teens, she couldn't find her vacuum cleaner and was convinced that one of my friends had stolen it.
	You know, because what 12-year-old boy doesn't want to leave a friend's place with a giant vacuum cleaner for sale on the black market or something?
	Because, you know, that's just what other kids want, man.
	Do you have any marijuana? No, but I've got this vacuum cleaner.
	Oh, even better!
	That's better than a beer, man.
	Hey, I've got this super cool new bike.
	It's got a little motor in it and cool.
	It's got shocks and everything. I will trade it for that ratty old vacuum cleaner any day of the week and twice on Sundays, man.
	Totally. Yeah, just something to throw so, you know, it wasn't her fault that she lost her car.
	It had to have been stolen by Satan in particular.
	Yeah. That was the start of my dating career.
	Because I was 12, right?
	And I was a pretty nerdy kid.
	I hadn't had my makeover, which I describe in my novel, The God of Atheists.
	So I was a pretty nerdy kid, wasn't super suave.
	But what happened was, I'd ask a girl out.
	And she'd say, I'm sorry I'm busy that night.
	And I said, well, listen.
	You're thinking this is just me.
	Let me set you straight, young lady.
	I have a vacuum cleaner.
	And she's like...
	Falls to her knees.
	Anyway, so...
	Yeah, the lack of responsibility is key.
	So, yeah, I am honestly concerned that you're pumping up this paradise to maintain some twisted relationship with your mother wherein you think you can...
	Well, she didn't give me what I wanted as a kid, but for sure...
	She'll let me dump on her as an adult.
	It's like, no, she won't. She'll evade.
	She'll feel worse. She'll guilt you.
	She'll bully you. She'll cry.
	She's an old hand at this stuff, man.
	You don't get this good at manipulation and surviving.
	She dealt with a pedophile, man.
	You don't think she can deal with you? Not to put you in the same category, but she dealt with really dangerous people.
	You know, guys who pull guns on kids, yeah, they're pretty dangerous people, right?
	And she dealt with this guy and she got him out of her.
	She's not going to break a sweat dealing with you.
	And not because you're weak, but just because she's your mom.
	And she's way more experienced.
	And here's the thing.
	You will go into this confrontation with your mom having some basic rules of decorum, right?
	Like there are things, you won't lie.
	You won't bully.
	You won't threaten.
	I'm sure you would be honest and open and all of that.
	But she'll have no such compunction about breaking any rules.
	She has no rules. Her only rule is whatever wins.
	Whatever wins. Hey, if I've got to send my kid over to a pedophile to have a guy pay my bills, fuck it, I'll do that.
	There's no rules there. There's no morals.
	So you're going into a fight like, well, I can't hit above the waist, and I've got to have my boxing gloves on, and there's going to be a referee, and there's going to be a ding-ding, right?
	And she's just coming in like, well, I'll just pull a cinder block loose from the ceiling and kill her.
	She's got no rules. You're going in with rules, she's got no rules.
	It's like dealing with the left. They've got no rules.
	But the right is all like, well, we'll have a debate and there'll be reason and evidence.
	The left is just like, eh, eh, I'm just pulling a trap door and you're going to fall and die.
	And then I've won, right? And she's going to de-platform you.
	There's no debate. There's no rules.
	There's no rules! So you're going in with these rules, unless you say, well, I'm going in with no rules, in which case, great, your mom has won and you've now abandoned all civilized standards, right?
	Yay! I win!
	She'll have no rules.
	Other than win at all costs.
	Win at all costs.
	And you'll be all hampered by these rules.
	Rules of engagement. You know, like this old cartoon I remember from being, when I was a kid, a bunch of medieval guys on a battlefield.
	And they've got all these, you know, armor and all this.
	And then they look up and there's all these arrows coming down.
	And one of the knights says, wait, wait, wait, wait.
	Can they do that? Is that, can they do that?
	It's like, yeah, it's war.
	It's war, and I remember Churchill talking about the First World War, said these supposedly Christian civilized nations, the only two things they didn't stoop to in the First World War were torture and cannibalism, and that's only because those two were of doubtful utility.
	There's no rules. When you're dealing with these kinds of people, you are going in.
	It's like you're boxing with a gorilla.
	And the gorilla's just like, hey man, I've got to trip you and rip your head off.
	I'll do that. You can't do that in a boxing ring.
	It's not a boxing ring to the gorilla.
	It's a fight to the death.
	You remember all these rules?
	You know, I was reading this quote about...
	How conservatives are like, yes, but Democrats are the real racists.
	And yes, but that's hypocritical, right?
	And they're going to end up with a bag over their head and some guy, some communist shooting them in the ditch and they'll be saying, yes, but how would you like it if I came and shot you with a bag over your head?
	It's like, yeah, it doesn't stop the bullets, man.
	Like all of this. There are no rules.
	Why do you think I'm out of politics?
	There's no rules left. There's no rules.
	It's just will to power.
	Manipulation lies. Like we're like, well, lying is bad.
	But, you know, other people are like, if lying gets me what I want...
	It's like blaming a tiger for sneaking up on its prey.
	That's cheating, man. You're the same color as the grass.
	I'm hungry. Of course I'm going to sneak up.
	I'm not going to say, hey, tiger's coming.
	Like, you know, with your kid, you play tag.
	I'm going to count to ten. I'm going to come and get you.
	The tiger doesn't do that. He just sneaks up and chews your ass off.
	Like, hey, man, you took down a baby giraffe.
	It's just a baby. It's like, yeah, but it's slow.
	And I'm hungry. I don't have any rules.
	I don't have any rules. So you're going to go fight with your mom?
	Like, I just want to get it all off my chest and I want to get her to take responsibility and I'm going to tell her the truth and you're going to have all these rules.
	You're not just going to lie and make things up and fake evidence and, right, she'll do anything.
	She's got no rules. Pretty certain in saying that once you bring a pedophile into a house with your kid, you know, there are no rules from going forward.
	No rules going forward.
	So... There's nothing for you.
	There's nothing for you in this pursuit.
	There's nothing for you other than a reproduction of a childhood desperate wish, which means you're not going to get what you want from this woman.
	There's nothing. The end of this road is right back to where you started, with you begging your mom for something that she ain't going to give you and never will.
	And the reason why you want this house so much is that you've got a need to continue this humiliation because that's what we're used to.
	You're used to controlling not getting what you want.
	You're used to controlling the feelings you have around not getting what you want.
	So, imagine, what would it be for you, what would it be like for you in a life where you have everything you want?
	Could you handle it?
	Like, this is the thing, we all, oh, I'm so frustrated.
	Okay, well, what happens if you have a life where you have everything you want?
	Because right now, wanting this house is dragging you right to the edge of self-destruction, and it may push you right over, because it's putting you right back to where you were as a child.
	What is it like if you say, okay, forget this house.
	It's not mine. I didn't earn it.
	I don't deserve it. There's no magic that means it should be mine.
	My grandmother, okay, so she gave it to my mom.
	And do you know why she gave it to your mom?
	Because your mom manipulated her and bullied her, which you would never do.
	So your grandmother's, I don't know, this is my guess, right?
	Your grandmother's got dementia and your mom's like, oh man, I've got to swoop in, I've got to fix this.
	Will! So I can get this house.
	Now you wouldn't sit there and bully and berate and trick and lie to get the house, but your mom will.
	I don't know if that's what happened.
	It's my guess, right? It could be anything, right?
	Yeah, that's pretty much exactly what happened.
	Okay, so would you have gone and lied and bullied and berated your grandmother to give the house to you?
	Absolutely not. No!
	So your mother has the house because she has no rules or standards, but when at all costs.
	And you think you can get it from her?
	No, because you have rules.
	Now, having rules means you've got to hang around with people who have rules.
	Because if you hang around with people who don't have rules, you'll lose every single time.
	You'll lose every single time.
	If you're playing chess, then you need to play chess with people who play chess by the rules.
	If they could just say, well, okay, this pawn is now a queen and this bishop is now a rook and I'm going to hide the king at my ass, right?
	Maybe the queen would be more comfortable, but you know what I'm saying, right?
	So you can't win against people who don't play by the rules.
	You can't win because you're limited by the rules and they're not.
	Like if you play checkers and somebody just says, you know what?
	I'm just going to make this checker piece a king.
	It's in the middle of the board. It didn't get to the other.
	I'm just going to make it a king. Or somebody who can write whatever they want on the deck.
	Like they've got a hand of cards.
	They're playing poker. They just write whatever the hell they want.
	Can you win against that person?
	No. You can't, right?
	Funny game. The only way to win is not to play.
	You don't play. You don't play with people who don't play by the rules.
	You don't try and get stuff from them.
	You don't try and beat them.
	You don't try and be honest with them.
	You don't try and get them or catch them or expose them.
	You have to save your negotiations and your strategies for people who play by the rules.
	And you don't engage with or want things from people who don't have any rules, any moral standards, any capacity for shame or guilt or conscience or empathy.
	People whose behavior is unlimited by any internal standards.
	You cannot win against them.
	You think you're going into a boxing match.
	She's just going to call an airstrike or poison you.
	Because then she doesn't lose.
	The house is a mirage leading you back to your mother so you never win.
	Do you see what I mean? You pumped up the value of your house so you get dragged back to your mother so she can win again and again and again and again and again and you will never ever leave that horrible childhood home and your children will see a mother who constantly loses.
	It's constantly frustrated.
	And you know what your children are going to say?
	Shit, man. Well, probably not shit, man.
	Your kids are going to, gosh, gee willikers, your kids are going to say.
	You know, they're going to say, man, you know, being good sucks.
	Being good just means you lose.
	Being good just means you get stressed and don't sleep and scream at the sky and Don't ever get what you want.
	You'll be training your kids to be like your mom if you try and win against your mom because they'll just see your mom winning all the time and you not.
	And they'll be like, well, man, grandma's got this great house and mom doesn't.
	Grandma keeps winning.
	Grandma laughs at mom and mom keeps getting stressed and upset.
	Grandma goes and sleeps like a baby.
	I want to be like grandma, the great house, sleep like a baby, win every conflict.
	I don't want to be like mom, she's stressed and miserable and unhappy and upset and angry all the time.
	I don't want that. You will be training.
	Your mom will win over you in instructing your kids how to live.
	You will be handing them to her like up the steps of an Incan sacrifice of the children.
	Yeah, I definitely, that's another thing of why I wanted to talk about how I should go about getting my mother out of my life, because there is no way without letting her near my kids.
	That is an absolute no.
	Well, that means giving up the dream of the house, right?
	The fantasy of the house. The fantasy is that you can get this house without it destroying you.
	Or your marriage. How much fun, this is your husband here, my friend, how much fun is it with your wife wanting this house?
	Michael? I mean, well...
	The thing is, I wanted to interject it somewhere, but my mother was abusive in her own right, but not a tenth as much as my wife's mother.
	Okay. Listen, Michael, you can call in, we can talk, and I'm so sorry, but two and a quarter hours, I want to make sure that we close this one on.
	But let me ask you this, because I don't want to ask you for your feedback and then discard it.
	If you could snap your fingers and have your wife not want this house, would you?
	Probably. Would you?
	Yes. It's out in the middle of nowhere.
	What do I like about it?
	No, see, Lucy, Michael doesn't have the obsession with winning over your mom that you do, so he doesn't need the house as a proxy to recreate his childhood.
	So he's like, you know what?
	It's not worth it. The free house is way too costly, because nothing comes for free.
	I would much rather, and of course, here's the thing, Lucy, by saying I need a free house, you're kind of dissing Michael here, because Michael, you know, you're a dad, you're going to be a provider.
	You can get a house, right? Conceivably.
	I mean, in just a couple of years, I'll be making 30 bucks an hour.
	Good, okay. You can find a way to get there, right?
	You can find a way to get there. And you want to be the man of the house.
	You can't be the man of the house if your wife and her mother are engaged in this death battle of the gods, right?
	Right. Because it's going to just invade your house, your consciousness.
	You won't get laid as much because your wife is stressed over fights with her mother.
	Come on, man! Defend your sex life!
	Come on! I just ran away.
	Defend your sex life! Honey, we might get a free house, but there'll be less banging, and you know for a man, the banging is the whole thing, so...
	I'd rather you not chase the house and we do it on the road.
	If we have to do it in the car, whatever, right?
	But no, you want to be, I don't mean like the boss of the household, but you want to be the man of the house, and you don't want to be providing over this endless catfight over some place you don't even want to live, right?
	Right, yeah. Yeah, so Lucy, you've got to love your husband enough to at least listen to that perspective, right?
	Yeah. But I'm owed by my mother.
	You are owed by your mother, and she'll never pay you.
	You want the house because you had a terrible childhood.
	It's like, well, at least I get the house as a consolation prize.
	But the house pursuit, pursuing the house just means you never get to end your childhood.
	It goes on and on. Walking away.
	Now we're talking. Running away?
	Nah, you can walk.
	She's old. I ran.
	It was fun. Yes, no.
	Mitchell lived out of state while we were dating and actually decided to leave his parents and come help me.
	So he just ran away from home, came and stayed away, and we started getting things together.
	It's definitely been the best thing that's ever happened to me.
	Right. He's done a very good job.
	Yeah, so here's the thing.
	So, Michael, you don't have a lot of in-law complications, right?
	With her family?
	No, you're like, sorry, you're not bringing a lot of your family and messes into the marriage with Lucy, right?
	No. Okay, so Lucy, quick question, if you don't mind, my dear.
	Quick question. Lucy, do you appreciate the fact that Michael is not bringing someone like your mom into your life?
	Yes, most definitely.
	Do you think it might be a loving thing in return to not bring your mother into Michael's life?
	If you don't mind me saying so?
	Yeah. Because he ran away from someone not as bad as your mom.
	Do you think he wants to run into a marriage with you and be right back where he started, but even worse?
	I mean, he agreed to it.
	That's one of the things I told him when we first started dating was actually...
	We asked for it. When we first started dating, when he first...
	Or rather, I asked him out.
	I warned him at the very beginning.
	I was like, I have issues.
	And he was like, that's okay.
	And I was horny.
	Oh, come on. She's very pretty.
	No, listen. You're very smart and you've got a good sense of humor.
	You're good-natured, Lucy. Like, wonderful things about you.
	No doubt. But here's the thing.
	Did you say...
	I'm going to burn up probably half a decade of her life in pursuit of getting a free house for my crazy mother.
	I don't think that specifically, no.
	Well, no. I could have inferred that, but no, it wasn't specifically said.
	Right. So, it's also out of love for your husband, Lucy, that it may be wife to let it go.
	Because he doesn't want the house, and he doesn't want the fight, and he doesn't want the stress, and he doesn't want you to be unhappy over this mess, right?
	So it's kind of really unpleasant for Michael.
	Don't let me speak for you, Michael.
	If I'm speaking out of turn, correct me, brother, please.
	It's not the most unpleasant thing in the world, but it's not fun.
	Well, no, not yet.
	Because it hasn't really gone underway yet, right?
	You know, the shark fin is in the distance.
	You've still got both your legs, but you've got to know where that shark goes, right?
	Right. Because if she...
	Lucy, if you start going after this house, what's it going to do to your marriage, your peace of mind, your stress, your capacity to conceive?
	What's it going to do with all those stress hormones with your fetus in your body?
	What's it going to do? Yeah, it wouldn't be good.
	But, I mean, if it ever got to the point where Mitchell, you know, decided to talk to me about it like that, I'd...
	If he said to me, you know, one day, I would like for you to just stop pursuing the house.
	So, I mean, he's pretty much said that here, so...
	Well, okay. So, here's the other question, which is something you guys can talk about.
	Oh, Michael. Mitchell.
	How you doing? Hi.
	Why didn't you say it yet?
	To be fair...
	I'm 25. Even if I do start making $30, I didn't know if we were ever going to get to own a house.
	That's just my generation.
	No, no, that's fair. But, you know, just keep going further out into the country.
	But aside from that...
	Yeah, yeah. Correct.
	Right, okay. No, I'm going to tell you too, if you want to have enough focus to start making money, you don't want this kind of battle going on.
	You'll make way more money focusing on your career and being happy with each other.
	Then you will trying to get a free house that's probably worth 100k max.
	And I'm not trying to diminish 100k.
	That's a lot of money. But in terms of your net income over time, if you're stressed and tense and not sleeping and fighting, you know that your job performance is going to suffer.
	You know you might get fired at times.
	You know you might show up late or tired and make a mistake or whatever.
	You'll make more money Over the course of your life, not having this battle, then you will save, even if you could somehow magically get this free house from this healthy woman in her 50s.
	It's not going to happen. How would you recommend I go about getting my mother out of my life?
	Just do what I did. Stop talking to her.
	Just complete. Doesn't sound like you need me at all for this part of the conversation.
	I mean, that's the only reason I've spoken to my parents at all is because it was to please my grandmother because I actually, I love my grandmother.
	But I mean, yours isn't around.
	So I'll tell you a tiny story from theater school days, right?
	So young actors push too hard on their emotions, right?
	You see movie actors, they're very light on their emotions.
	They just get so much across with just a little glance or a little sort of change in the eyes or whatever, right?
	So, you know, somebody says, be angry and, you know, the young actors just screaming and throwing things, right?
	Or cry. They just like make it way too big and all that, right?
	And they try. To get all these emotions.
	Now, you either have the emotions or you don't or whatever, right?
	So the acting teacher, one guy was doing a scene, an improv, right?
	And he was just staring at the ground.
	And we were all like, I don't know what he's doing.
	Did he see something down there?
	He's got a kink in his neck.
	And eventually the acting teacher said, okay, okay, okay.
	What are you doing? And the guy said, well, I'm trying to cry.
	Because I felt that would be appropriate to the scene.
	And that was just like red meat to the pit bull of the acting teacher, right?
	So he said, okay, everyone, you're all doing the same stuff.
	Don't pretend you're not. I went, okay, everyone, get in a chair.
	Everyone get in a chair. Now, I want you to really try to get up from that chair.
	Try your hardest to get up from that chair.
	So we're all straining, right?
	And then he said, okay, now just get up from the chair.
	So we just stood up, right? The important thing.
	It's not that hard. You don't sit there and try to cry.
	You either cry or you don't, but you don't just sit there trying.
	So when it comes to, let's say you don't want your mother in your life, it's the easiest thing in the world.
	You literally have to do nothing at all.
	You understand? Because picking up the phone, answering the phone is a decision and it's an effort.
	If the phone rings and you don't move, you're literally doing nothing at all.
	Not calling your mother is literally doing nothing at all or it's doing everything but.
	So as far as like how you get your mother out of your life, if you don't want your mother in your life, it's the easiest thing in the world.
	You literally have to do nothing.
	You don't have to try to get your mother out of your life.
	You have to try to keep her in your life.
	Yeah. And it's a state of perfect relaxation physically.
	I'm not saying mentally it's a different, but it's a state of perfect relaxation to not have your mother in your life.
	You don't have to try. What steps do I have to take?
	What do you mean? Just don't answer the phone.
	Don't call her. Whatever, right?
	But that's an act of, no, I'm not saying that's easy, but as far as what to do, that's easy.
	The emotions of doing it or not, if that makes sense.
	Yeah. I'm kind of, for the most part, I've gotten away from, you know, her church community and her friends.
	There are a couple that I know that if I cut contact with my mother, I'm going to have to lose them too, and that upsets me, but...
	Well, sure, it upsets you, and I understand why, but if people choose a child abuser, pedophile, Maria, over you...
	Yeah. I mean, the friends I'm talking about, I don't think they're fully aware, but...
	Well, if you ever want to clarify it, you can just tell them.
	If you ever want to clarify it, you can tell them.
	But it's also...
	I think, look, I think it's everybody's job to look out for kids.
	Yeah. I think it's everybody's job to look out for kids.
	And I've done it.
	I know a bunch of listeners have done it.
	You just do your best to try and look out for kids.
	And... If they didn't know something was wrong, they chose to avoid that knowledge.
	If they didn't notice that something was wrong, they chose to avoid that knowledge.
	And they are enablers at best.
	You're not losing anyone of value if you don't hang out with people who think your mom is a good person.
	Yeah. Yeah. Thank you, Stefan.
	You are very, very welcome.
	I'll put the offer out, of course, as I do.
	If you guys need any help for therapy or any cash for therapy, I'm happy to help out.
	Will you keep me posted if you need anything, or will you keep me posted, and will you keep me posted about how things are going?
	Right now, we're financially okay.
	I have a counselor, and I'm hoping to get another job later in the month to have an interview.
	She'll be watching your show, so most likely, if anything changes, she'll let you know.
	Okay, so the paradise is not the house.
	The paradise is the peace of mind.
	Yeah. And whatever it takes, you have fought for a quarter century.
	You have fought for a quarter century.
	Hard. Hard battle.
	It's fine to relax.
	It's essential to relax. It's important to relax.
	Do not anymore put yourself under the power of destructive and immoral people.
	And whatever desires or wants you have to give up to get out from under that power, It is a very, very good thing.
	All right. Thanks, everyone, so much.
	Freedomain.com forward slash donate.
	If you would like to help out the show, I would certainly appreciate it.
	Thank you, of course, to the fine couple.
	It was a really great pleasure to meet and chat with you.
	I really can't tell you guys how much I admire you.
	Thank you. Yeah, this courage, this consistency, this bravery.
	I love your show and I love you.
	I love listening to you.
	Well, thank you very much. I admire you guys enormously.
	I thank you for your honesty and openness in this conversation.
	I'm glad it sounds like it was pretty helpful and I appreciate that.
	So everybody have a wonderful, wonderful weekend and I will talk to you.
	Probably I'll do a show early next week.
	Go Bitcoin! And have a great evening.

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